Newly-Developed Crystal Material Underpins a Real-Time 60Hz Dynamic 3D Holographic Display

A team of scientists at China's Nankai University has come up with a new approach to visualizing 3D imagery: a real-time holographic display capable of running at 60 frames per second (FPS).

"Holographic display [technology] has attracted widespread interest because of its ability to show the complete information of the object and bring people an unprecedented sense of presence," the team explains in the abstract to their paper, "[but] the absence of ideal recording materials has hampered the realization of their commercial application."

That's where the team's work comes in: The development of crystals based on bismuth and magnesium co-doped lithium niobate, or LN:Bi,Mg, chemistry, which offers a response time of 7.2ms — boosting the upper frame rate for a photorefractive holographic display from around 20 frames per second in previous works to 60 FPS, or the same as a standard two-dimensional liquid-crystal display (LCD).

To prove it, the team built a real-time holographic display capable of showing eight Olympic Games-themed holograms — the interlocking rings logo plus pictograms for rhythmic gymnastics, karate, diving, baseball, basketball, athletics, shooting, and surfing — which was capable of running at a 60Hz refresh rate.

Unsurprisingly, however, the team is quick to warn that there is a long road between proving the technology in the lab and putting real-time holograms in TVs or smartphones. "Our results demonstrate LN:Bi,Mg crystal can be an ideal candidate material for real-time dynamic holographic 3D display," the researchers conclude, "though great efforts are needed to promote its practical applications."

The team's work is available as an early view article in the journal Opto-Electronic Advances, under open-access terms.